Confronting Counterinsurgency

‘This is an essential and incendiary political and philosophical reflection on current global resistance movements. A collection of powerful narratives rooted in the liberation strategies of those who struggle against corporate and state conquest, brutality and death and who continue to resist’

‘Makes plain the relations between the U.S. as a militarized carceral police state, the imprisonment of our resistance, and the genocidal wars our technocracy imparts to the world in Gaza and beyond. This is a work of radical care and love, a study guide for the urgency of the moment where we must fight, to live, and to struggle’

‘True to its title, this eye-opening book holds its readers steady while guiding us through a perturbing confrontation with counterinsurgency in empire’s proxy wars, colonies, prisons and schools. Cop cities emerge as domestic forts to contain an unlikely enemy — us. But we’re neither helpless, nor alone’

‘A powerful collection that reminds us that the progress we build toward liberation must be constantly defended. Rooted in a radical sense of love, care, and self critique, this collection brings together necessary conversations and analyses surrounding our movements’

‘Woven to form a radical tapestry that leads the reader into and through vibrant sites of insurgency, life-making, and struggle against the crushing force of fascism, imperial rot, and racial capitalism’

‘Spanning geographies and different approaches to organizing, these essays consistently demonstrate that the struggle for abolition is a global Black struggle. Abolition breaches the gates of reformist logics of all sorts to articulate a radical account of community-making and to offer us a different account of what living better collectively together can be’

Joy James is a political philosopher who works with organizers. Her books include In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love; New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner; and Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon. Her edited volumes include Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons and ENGAGE: Indigenous, Black, Afro-Indigenous Futures.